WYSIWYG formatted text & images editor for VCL

TMS WYSIWYG text editor controls for VCL & FireMonkey
WYSIWYG formatted text & images editor for VCL & FireMonkey
Background
The standard rich text editor that ships with Delphi for over 15 years now is based on the Windows
riched20.dll library control. While Microsoft introduced meanwhile newer versions 3.0 and 4.1 of this
rich editor control, the VCL version continued to be based on a wrapper of the v2.0. This means that
the feature set of this rich editor control is quite limited. On the other side, in the Delphi cross
platform framework FireMonkey, there is no edit control for rich text at all. The only editor control
that is available there in the framework is TMemo. As many of our customers requested both more
flexibility from a Windows VCL based rich editor and also a rich editor for FireMonkey, the TMS team
decided to take on these projects. From the start, we want to create a control for FireMonkey that
would fit neatly the FMX paradigm of one source code to rule all platforms (Windows, iOS, Android,
Mac OSX at this time) but realizing this would be a huge effort, we wanted that this effort would also
be usable for VCL developers targetting Windows only.
Architecture
After a lot of research was done on performance (as we knew from our experience with other FMX
controls this would be difficult) we decided on what we internally disrespectfully call a sandwich
architecture. This sandwich architecture should enable us to isolate a core formatted text handling
layer from the framework, i.e. the VCL and FireMonkey framework. The benefit clearly is that work
on the core only needs to be done once and further evolutions of the core and its maintenance
automatically benefits both VCL and FireMonkey framework versions. Visually, this can be seen as:
The core middle layer not only deals with rendering the formatted text and images but also with all
the manipulations that can happen with it. Non-trivial areas in this core middle layer abstraction are:
dealing with font handling, coordinates and images that are all treated in a different way in VCL and
FireMonkey frameworks. Between this architecture and its final implementation is of course lots and
lots of hard work both in development and testing.
Feature set
For the first iteration of the new rich editor controls, we decided on the following feature set:
TMS WYSIWYG text editor controls for VCL & FireMonkey
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Compact light-weight WYSIWYG editor for formatted text
Supports formatted text with bullets, hyperlinks, indenting
Paragraphs with left, center, right alignment
Support for images, plain text and formatted text on clipboard
Images (BMP, JPEG, GIF, PNG) natively built-in
Custom graphics elements / owner draw elements can be embedded
Undo/redo support
Find & replace + text highlighting
Mailmerge fields, mailmerge function
Printing (on Windows)
Exports to .TXT, .RTF, .HTML files.
Many action classes to minimize work on building GUIs around the control
Includes different toolbars (docking, ribbon, regular) ready to use for building GUIs
Of course, the team has a lot more ideas and already started work on the next iterations of this rich
editor control and as always, we are of course listening to all your feedback & requests to steer this
further development.
VCL TAdvRichEditor with ribbon toolbar UI also included
TMS WYSIWYG text editor controls for VCL & FireMonkey
FireMonkey versions TTMSFMXRichEditor running on 3 platforms: Windows, Mac OS-X, iOS:
Getting started
Drop a TAdvRichEditor (in VCL) or TTMSFMXRichEditor (in FMX) on the form. The component with its
default settings is ready for use. Entering of text can be done with default font & alignment.
In VCL, for ease of use, connect a TAdvRichEditorEditButtonBar and TAdvRichEditorFormatButtonBar
that presents most of the built-in actions as a button bar or use the docking toolbars
TAdvRichEditorEditToolBar, TAdvRichEditorFormatToolBar, TAdvRichEditorEditingToolBar,
TAdvRichEditorParagraphToolBar to apply all kinds of formatting to the text without writing any code
or use its ribbon equivalents for a WYSISWYG editor with ribbon UI.
Included docking toolbars for VCL
Included ribbon toolbars for VCL
TMS WYSIWYG text editor controls for VCL & FireMonkey
In FireMonkey, drop a TTMSFMXRichEditorEditToolBar and TTMSFMXRichEditorFormatToolBar on
the form and connect these to the TTMSFMXRichEditor and you have a ready to use rich editor
without writing a single line of code.
Included toolbars for FireMonkey:
Actions
If you want to hookup the various possible interactions with the rich editor to your own UI or UI
controls, you can use the many actions that come with the rich editor:
TAdvRichEditorClear, TAdvRichEditorCut, TAdvRichEditorCopy, TAdvRichEditorPaste,
TAdvRichEditorSelectAll, TAdvRichEditorAlignRight, TAdvRichEditorAlignCenter,
TAdvRichEditorAlignLeft, TAdvRichEditorBold, TAdvRichEditorItalic, TAdvRichEditorUnderline,
TAdvRichEditorStrikeOut, TAdvRichEditorSubScript, TAdvRichEditorSuperScript,
TAdvRichEditorTextColor, TAdvRichEditorFontName, TAdvRichEditorFontSize,
TAdvRichEditorBulletType, TAdvRichEditorNumberedBulletType, TAdvRichEditorColor,
TAdvRichEditorIndent, TAdvRichEditorUnIndent, TAdvRichEditorUndo, TAdvRichEditorRedo
TMS WYSIWYG text editor controls for VCL & FireMonkey
Programmatic access
The API for adding and manipulating formatted text in the rich editor controls is exactly the same for
the VCL version as for the FireMonkey version. When referring to RichEditor in this section, this can
as such refer to both TAdvRichEditor (VCL) as to TTMSFMXRichEditor (FMX).
Text can be inserted in RichEditor in various ways. To start with call:
RichEditor.AddText(‘Hello world’);
Add text on the next line with:
RichEditor.AddLineBreak;
RichEditor.AddText(‘Text on the second line’);
To add text with a different font than default font, use:
RichEditor.AddLineBreak;
RichEditor1.AddText('Another line with special
font',12,'Courier',[fsBold]);
TMS WYSIWYG text editor controls for VCL & FireMonkey
To change attributes of text in the RichEditor, perform a selection based on index of the text and
length. For example, to change the color of “world” on the first line, set a selection from character 6
for 5 characters (character index starts at zero) and set an attribute for the selection followed by
remove the selection itself:
RichEditor1.SelectText(6,5);
RichEditor1.SetSelectionColor(PlatformRed);
for VCL and claRed for FMX
RichEditor1.SetSelectionItalic(True);
RichEditor1.ClearSelection;
To add images to the RichEditor, use:
RichEditor1.AddImage('.\sample.png');
//PlatformRed = clRed
TMS WYSIWYG text editor controls for VCL & FireMonkey
Persisting and exporting formatted text from the rich editor controls
Clipboard
From TAdvRichEditor or TTMSFMXRichEditor, there is built-in support to copy its text to the clipboard
in 2 ways: plain text and rich text (RTF). As such, you can copy all text or a selection of text from the
TAdvRichEditor or TTMSFMXRichEditor and paste it in popular applications such as MS Word or MS
Outlook with its formatting and images applied.
Persist in file or stream
The rich editor controls offers the methods SaveToFile(), SaveToStream() and equivalent
LoadFromFile(), LoadFromStream() to persist the formatted text and images to a binary file or binary
stream. This is a proprietary binary format.
Export to RTF or HTML file
For generating an RTF or HTML file from TAdvRichEditor or TTMSFMXRichEditor, two non-visual
exporter components are offered: TAdvRichEditorHTMLIO and TAdvRichEditorRTFIO (for VCL)
TTMSFMXRichEditorHTMLIO and TTMSFMXRichEditorRTFIO (for FireMonkey). To use these controls,
simply drop the non-visual control on the form and assign the rich editor control to the property
RichEditorHTMLIO.RichEditor or RichEditorRTFIO.RichEditor. Then you can simply call
RichEditorRTFIO.Save(FileName);
RichEditorHTMLIO.Save(FileName);
TMS WYSIWYG text editor controls for VCL & FireMonkey
Notice that for HTML export, the default behavior is that all images used in the document are
exported as separate linked image files in the same folder where the .HTML file is generated. If it is
preferred that images are generated in a different folder, use the 2nd default parameter ImagePath:
RichEditorHTMLIO.Save(FileName, ImagePath);
Conclusion
With the new VCL and FireMonkey rich editor controls, the TMS team tried to offer a comprehensive
component set to empower you to add a formatted text / images editor in your traditional VCL
Windows applications or cross platform FireMonkey applications running on Windows, Mac OS-X,
iOS, Android with a minimum effort, often barely writing any line of code.
More information, trial downloads, documentation can be found at:
VCL version
http://www.tmssoftware.com/site/advricheditor.asp
FireMonkey version
http://www.tmssoftware.com/site/tmsfmxpack.asp?s=fmxricheditor#features